The Potters at Pemberlune
It is dusk, and the sun has started setting over the flush hills in Derbyshire. Upon one, a great building dwells, without the flourishes and the pomp so typical of wizarding, end-of-centuries mansions. It is stone, and solid, and apparently cold.
Just like its owner.
A long, grey greatcoat suddenly moves, shifting in the summer’s light breeze. The fabric must have made some noise, imperceptible maybe, but she turns to spot what is happening.
The breeze has forced her own hair up, which she’s messily shoved inside the collar of her own coat. A few strands, left untamed, frame her face, and exalt those piercing eyes—the first feature of hers he’d learnt to love. She smiles, and his heart lets out a flutter of embarrassing beats.
He joins her on the terrace. Dew is forming on the shiny field before them. He has barely had the sense to throw on a wrinkled pair of breeches and a night-shirt, but she’d flung out of their bedroom, her cheeks flush, and he’d struggled to keep up with her.
They’d made love. Again and again. And yet, she always grew awkward after. As if she can’t believe it can actually be her. But he loves her, and he would always carve out paths to make it irrevocably known to her.
She gasps as he gently holds her from behind. His hands trail ephemerally on her arms, leaving a trace of cold shivers behind them. Her skin is so pale and delicate, that it reddens wherever he touches her. He leans down to leave a sloppy kiss on her forehead, and he clings onto her hips more decisively.
Then, she moves, shifting away from his hold, barely even locking their eyes. She timidly catches his hand, and she smiles again, and he is lucky if he is still capable of forming a thought anymore.
They settle onto a fallen tree, and he has to help her clamber on top of it, and he seizes the opportunity to touch her, and to hold her, and take in her light physique. Her bare feet must be cold, and he gently picks them up to cover them with his greatcoat.
They sit astride, and if she looks at Pemberlune, his eyes are solely fixed on her. He wants her to look back, to focus on him, to gift him with the sight of those attractive jade irises.
So he talks. The tone is a bit ironic, really, but she’s teaching him to have fun. To play, as if he were a kid again. ‘And how are you this evening, my dear?’
She stares back at him, and she picks up the slight playful tone. ‘Very well, only I wish you would not call me “my dear”.’
He was not expecting that answer. ‘Why?’
She shifts, and it’s beyond his help, and he’s holding her again. Which is for the best, because she is blushing again, and because what she is going to say makes her uncomfortable. ‘It’s what my father always calls my mother when he’s cross about something.’
He does not dwell on her mention of her parents. He has long learnt to forgive them, or at the very best—not to care about them. He wants her to know this. ‘What endearments am I then allowed?’
She giggles, and that sound fills his ears with the same urgency as if it were oxygen. ‘Let me think. Lils, for everyday. My Pearl, for Sundays; and Goddess Divine—but only on special occasions.’
She is not serious, and he wants to keep the joke up. He thinks about her father, and how he so often gets angry—‘And what shall I call you when I'm cross? Mrs. Potter?’
She takes her time to reflect on the question, and stares at him as if he’d opened a conversation she’d never given much thought about. Clearly, it had still not happened for him to be cross at her for anything. Not in a long time.
She suddenly knows what to say. ‘Oh no. You can only call me Mrs. Potter when you are entirely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.’
He catches his breath in his throat. It must be an invitation. He takes her face between his hands.
‘And how are you this evening, Mrs. Potter?'
Her lips curl up, and she’s clearly about to open her face in one of those grins he so adores, but he cannot wait further, and he kisses her before the smile can fully form.
He backs down first, and she is surprised for a moment, but then he presses his lips firmly on her cheek. ‘Mrs. Potter’.
Her nose. ‘Mrs. Potter’.
Her jaw. ‘Mrs. Potter’.
Her neck, and he leaves a wet trail of kisses moving down. ‘Mrs. Potter’—‘Mrs. Potter’—‘Mrs. Potter’.
She moans, and he fights the urge to pick her up and bring her back to their bedroom again. To never return. He finally reaches her chest, and places one last, blazing kiss right in the centre, his hands holding her bosom up, his fingers circling avidly around her nipples. Her breath becomes irregular, and they both know what is going to happen now.
She lets him carry her back to the terrace. Before entering their bedroom, they stop to stare at the view of their estate. No more light is there to uncover its infinite details, but they both know what’s there.
An unending, indefinite potential. Just like them. They can just feel it—they are utterly at ease, and no longer have anything to hide from each other.